Integrated Care Academy

Building digital capability for health and care systems

Health and care systems are being asked to deliver more connected, digitally enabled care against the backdrop of workforce shortages, rising demand and increasing complexity. While national strategies set direction, progress depends on local capability: the skills, confidence and shared understanding needed to implement digital change across organisations.

The Integrated Care Academy (ICA) at UWE Bristol provides support where this capability is built and tested in practice. Its work focuses on the space between policy intent and operational reality, working with partners to develop digital capability through collaboration, shared learning and applied activity rooted in real service challenges.

Biomedical student looking into a microscope in a lab.

CoDE: A regional way to move from projects to practice

NHS organisations across the Southwest were often addressing similar digital challenges independently, with limited opportunity to share learning or coordinate approaches. This made progress slower and more resource intensive than necessary.

The Southwest Healthcare Centre for Digital Excellence (CoDE) provides a solution to this issue by creating a shared regional structure allowing organisations to work on digital maturity together. Allowing partners to compare practice, reflect on what has and has not worked, and develop a more consistent understanding of digital readiness across multiple systems. The value of having a neutral space has been a strong theme, particularly where conversations need to cut across organisational and professional boundaries.

Working closely with the ICA, CoDE connects services with academic expertise and supports engagement across systems. This has helped shift the focus away from one-off digital initiatives towards longer term capability building. Digital transformation is rarely a purely technical exercise, instead progress depends on leadership understanding of digital change, workforce confidence, and alignment with wider system priorities. Where these conditions are considered, digital tools are more likely to be implemented safely and embedded into everyday practice for staff and patients.

Building and sharing learning across the system

Activity around CoDE sits alongside other ICA collaborations, including ITP and Reframe, which show how joint work between UWE Bristol and health and care organisations unfolds in practice. These examples follow partnerships from early scoping through cross‑organisational delivery, capturing the challenges met along the way and how approaches shifted in response to service context and capacity. Rather than offering fixed models, they centre lived experience, focusing on what worked, what needed adjusting and what was learned through delivery, so the complexity of implementation becomes visible and transferable. This helps peers across integrated care systems avoid duplication, anticipate common issues and adapt solutions to their own settings.

Learning is also shared through more accessible formats. The Let’s Talk Health and Care podcast series, for example; captures insight from people working in health, care and system leadership roles, focusing on integrated working, digital change and workforce pressures. These conversations complement written outputs by providing space for reflection and discussion grounded in experience.

The ICA also works with industry partners to explore digital innovation, collaboration with organisations such as Keyowa brings together health and care organisations, academic expertise and responsible industry partners. The emphasis remains on understanding how solutions are designed, introduced and sustained within complex care environments, rather than promoting technology in isolation.

Shaping a sustainable model for system change

Alongside this delivery activity, the ICA is documenting its own development. An article currently in progress examines how the academy has evolved in response to changes in the integrated care landscape, drawing on lessons from partnership delivery and cross system engagement. This work considers the practical implications of operating at system level and the value of universities acting as neutral convenors within health and care.

Across all its work, a consistent approach underpins the ICA. Activity is shaped around defined challenges identified with partners, learning is shared in ways that can travel across systems, and capability building remains the primary focus. Over time, this has resulted in a growing portfolio of applied projects, partnerships and shared insight that support health and care systems to move from digital ambition to change that is sustained in practice.